The Art of Leadership - Day 3

[Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] hello beautiful leaders of the art of leadership program. Thank you for tuning in from all over the place and for your beautiful feedback on the animation, as always.

So, we are handling a thing in the Alpha F brand right now that is causing some stuff behind the scenes with my team and, of course, during leadership season. So, it's the perfect timing. But I want to share some of this with you behind the scenes because I think this is a really important thing and it's going to shine a light on when it's so important for every single person on the team to be self-led.

So, we have a security breach with some of our videos. And so, someone has kind of been sharing, like making playlists of stuff and giving links to people about our programs. And, you know, some of you have been DM'd on Instagram saying, "Hey, I saw that you shared some stuff, and if you exchange me the programs you have, I'll exchange me the programs I have." And so, we're going behind the scenes finding that.

But the crazy thing is how it happens is my team finds out about these things, and then they go in like ninjas. Like, there's no better way to explain. Like, I have an international spy squad. This is what I have. And so, before they come to me with just a problem, they've already started doing, "Who, who is this person?" They've gone, they've tried stuff, they've thought of things I never would have thought of. They've gone behind the scenes, they've figured stuff out, they found how to block certain things, they found this person on all the platforms, they're fixing all the stuff, they're taking all the links down, they're changing the links, they're finding different ideas.

By the time I receive the problem, it does not feel like a boiling hot potato in my hands. By the time I receive the pro problem, I have got a team of dedicated ninjas on a mission to rectify the situation at warp speed. I feel held. I feel supported. I feel proud. I do not feel I've just got chaos and a team that doesn't know what the heck they're doing. I am so supported. I was able to continue my business meeting while they were behind the scenes figuring it out.

And so, what, what does it take to create this? Is a few things. Every single person on the team understands their importance, understands their value, understands their worth, understands that they have responsibility. They have, they can do something about this. Like, no one on the team is just like, "What do I do?" They're all like, "I have an idea. Oh, why don't we do this? Oh, you know what we need to do? We got to do this. You know, we got to do this. We got to do this." Everyone on the team is in a state right now where they're just like, "Go. Let me, let me show up and do what I've got to do."

The second thing is they have incredible communication skills. So, did you see that this is happening? Yeah. What are you doing about it? I'm thinking of doing this. That's a great idea. If you do this, I'll do this. Yeah, perfect. Okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. They all know what each other's skills are. They all know who's best at what. Who's the best at recon? Who's the best at uploading stuff? Who's the best tech person? So, everyone takes on their role and they do what they've got to do.

Now, the thing is, this isn't possible if I micromanage everyone. If people don't feel like they have the right to make a decision. If they don't feel comfortable or confident in their own decision-making process. This stuff happens and they all say, "Well, let's see what Melanie says. Let's not touch anything. Let's not do anything." And then nothing moves. And if I happen to be busy, nothing moves at all because then it's like, "I can't get back to you right now." So, nothing happens.

With them, they move, they move, they move together. They figure stuff out. They give me options. They give me things to respond to. And me being a human design with a sacral authority, stuff to respond to, we always get faster. Like, "Do we want? Do we like this?" "Uh-uh." "Wait, let's do this." "Okay, yeah." "Okay, how about this?" "Yes, this is good." "Uh-huh." "Yeah, how about this?" "Uh-uh." "No, let's do this instead." So, very quick turnaround. And really, something that could have cost certain businesses a lot of time and money, really turned around in one day because my team is just phenomenal.

So, in order to have a phenomenal team, something that I think is so important is you've got to be a match for a phenomenal team. So, we've talked about before the need to help people. When you need to help people, you're not always a match for the best team. You're a match for people who want your help. And so, this is a very big, important piece for entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs love to help people. It's, it's, it's part of who we are. And the idea is not that we're going to stop helping people. It's just we're going to help them in the form of serving them. We're going to help them in the form of leading them. Not just help them in the form of helping the way we used to where we over-give and they take and we feel depleted and resentful and feel like if we stop giving, they'll be mad. And we keep doing it forever until the relationship breaks and we realize we should have stopped it 10 years ago. We're not going to do that because that doesn't help anybody.

So, the first thing is, you've got to be in the frequency not just of helping people. You've got to be in the frequency of wanting to help your clients and serve your clients. I want you to see this as a perspective shift. If I see it like, "I have a business and I take on my employees to help them." Do you think I'm going to serve my clients at the highest level or a lower level? If the employees I have, I hired in order to help the employees, are the clients going to be served at their maximum or are the clients going to be served a little lower?

Now, what if I hire employees to lead and to serve the employees, but our goal is to serve the clients and to help the clients? Now, do you think the clients get served higher or lower? Higher. So, when we're looking at a "for me, for you, for us" business model, what we're looking at is, I hire a team that has the same power to help, serve, and lead my clients as I do. If I bring on CL, if I bring on a team that I have to help, then I end up having not enough energy to help my clients, and they don't know how to help the clients. They end up bottlenecking the business.

When you think about your relationship, if you want to have kids one day, do you want to have a partner that you have to help, or do you want a partner that you can serve and you can lead with, so that one day you can help, serve, and lead your children? The idea of a "for me, for you, for us" is realizing that every relationship leads to a result. Any lasting relationship leads to a result. That's why sometimes, as we grow up, and especially entrepreneurs, it becomes harder to have friendships because friendships become the only thing that doesn't have a result. If you're not doing something of value together, if you're not going somewhere together, if there's not something you're building together, a lot of times friendships will fizzle out over time because it feels like we're not building anything together.

One of the things I'm really grateful about is some of my best, closest friends are in my company with me. And although we have very clear boundaries that when we're in business, we're in business, there is something so, so powerful about having my friends doing something with me. It feels like those friendships are almost guarded or protected because we're building something. My relationship with Kevin is for me, for Kevin, and for the future legacy of our family. But also for me, for Kevin, and for the people we impact with our relationship. Kevin and I impact a lot of people positively with our relationship. If I wanted to do good for the world in relationships, I picked the right person to walk with for that. I could have chosen someone that was very chaotic but created a lot of passion in my life, that was a hot mess express, that would not have been very great for my clients. It would not have been a great "for me, for you, for us" kind of match. This is like, we serve the collective, even in our relationship. It gives us a bigger context.

So, in the context of business, the most important thing is the client. And so, it's you, your team, your customers. So, the team you're bringing in is meant to serve your customers. You want to serve your team and lead your team. But if you lose all of your energy helping your team, there's nothing left for the customers.

So, how do you get a self-led team? First of all, is your bigger picture desire not just to help your employees? You're joining forces with your employees. You're, you're becoming an ally with your employees so that together you can serve your customers. Now, when you think about a luxury experience in your life, so like the most luxurious or good-feeling feeling, like, "Gosh, it feels so good to just have a confident person deal with me for a change." You'll realize that the number one thing that feels good in customer experience or customer service is that people can make a decision without having to ask anybody else. When you feel you've got the person in charge, it changes your experience.

So, if you go into a store and you ask for something, any kind of special treatment or any kind of thing, and they're like, "Oh, we would have to management. We don't have authority to do that." There's a feeling of like, "I'm not taken care of really well." I need to ask to speak to the manager. And then you speak to the manager, and the manager says, "Oh, we can't do anything about that. It's just company policies." And you're like, "Well, can I speak to the owner?" "No." The more luxurious the place is, usually you'll be able to speak to a person with power. They say, "You know what? Let me take care of that for you." Or they'll say, "Let me look into it real quick," and they come back and they absolutely take care of it very fast. The less amount of chain reaction you need in order to get something taken care of, the quicker you get what you need. More luxurious the experience. That requires leadership.

So, even today with the Alpha Fem team, we had a first solution, and then we got feedback from clients immediately. They don't like the solution. And so, the team came back to me and was like, "They don't like this. Here's what else we could do." Immediately, they fixed it. They turned around. They found two solutions and implemented both in one day. They implemented a solution, received feedback, and implemented a second solution in the same day. You need action, speed, confidence. This comes from people who are capable of making a decision.

Now, what makes a person capable of making a decision? What creates a solid person? Is they feel empowered by their workplace. They know they are respected. They know they're cared for. They're not just going to make a mistake and get fired. Like, if ever it was a mistake, that'd be supported somehow. But the other part of it is that they feel like their colleagues can support them. They've got a lot of points of contact to make powerful decisions. And they feel like they've been given enough leeway to know what the right decisions might be. "I have an idea. I think it's going to fly. I'm confident about my idea. I've also asked my teammates. They all agree, and we're on the same page." And really, if we're on the same page, it's probably going to fly. And on top of it, if I did it and it didn't work, because it's coming from the right place and it's a good idea and we all agreed, we won't get in trouble for it. We'll just learn and we'll adapt and we'll course-correct. That's what creates leadership.

It's not that no one ever gets told, "Hey, that was not the best." It's not like people haven't been told, "Hey, this needs to be written differently. That's not good. We're not, this is not the best way." It's not that we don't give feedback. We give feedback. But no one fears that if they make a decision, it's the end. No one is walking on a fine line of fear. There's leadership in the room.

Now, for there to be leadership in the room, though, I have less standing ovation, round of applause for who I am because I have a team. And you'd be surprised how many people would prefer to have a team that struggles just so that they get to say, "If I didn't do it all, we'd fail." "Yeah, I have a team, but they're useless. Thank God for me." You'd be surprised how many people use an inadequate team as a badge of honor for being able to do everything themselves, or an inadequate partner in their relationship, or not great friends, or, you name it, whatever you can wear as a badge of honor. But you're doing it all by yourself.

And so, in order to even attract these kinds of people into your life, you have to be willing to put that badge down if you've ever worn it. It's like, "I'm an energetic match for extraordinary people. I learn to surrender to their leadership. I trust their judgment. I lead them and I communicate with them effectively when there are mistakes and problems." And if I can do that, I can have a self-led team.

There needs to be a very high level of respect. And this is something that's sometimes difficult for us women. We understand love. We understand like, respect is a little wobbly because the way we've been taught respect is more like dictatorship. "You respect because I said so. You respect because there's authority over you." Instead of respect like, "Mad respect." Like, "I don't have any idea what it's like to do what you're doing. I respect the greatness in you that I don't even know about. Like, I respect you." That is a little harder for women.

And so, when you think about two people who don't like each other, often when it comes to women in business, if you don't like each other, you can't work together. But a lot of times when it comes to more masculine energy roles, don't like each other, but can respect each other. That shows up a lot even in conversation. "Don't like the guy, but respect him." That comes up a lot. And so, I started really looking into, what is the energetic of respect? And why is it that in feminine energetics, we struggle with this frequency? And I realize that women compare themselves a lot more to each other. And not just about what they're capable of doing, but who they are.

And so, respect is the thing you break when you start looking for flaws in other people. Flaws. The flaws, or the respect is the thing you break when you gossip. Respect is the thing you break when you imagine bad scenarios or decide that you don't matter. Like, if you respect a person, you don't imagine the worst of them, or gossip about them, or or imagine that there's something wrong with them, or look for something wrong with them. And even if you don't like them, you still don't do that. That's respect.

So, you could look at, let's say, Taylor Swift. And you could say, "I don't like her music. I don't like that people fan girl all over her. I don't like the style of her music. I don't like her lyrics. I don't like how she got famous. I don't like this." This would eventually become, "I don't respect her." But if you could say, "Gosh, I respect this woman. I have no idea what it takes to have a career that big, to sell that many records, to write that many songs, to consistently come in top of the charts like she's done." No woman's ever done that. Actually, no artist has ever done the kinds of things she's done. "Mad respect." "Oh, you're a Taylor Swift fan?" "No, I respect the woman though." We don't hear that. "I hate Taylor Swift" was the top trending hashtag in the world a few years ago. In the world. That is a lot of people triggered by a young, successful woman. People who felt triggered by the money, the talent, the fame, the beauty, and just hated it. "She doesn't deserve to have what she has." How do you know that? The only way you can come to that conclusion is if you have no respect.

So, what we really need to work on as women is respect. Respect to not tear each other down whenever we're triggered by each other. And in the workplace, if you're going to have leaders underneath you instead of followers in your organization, if you're going to have a team that holds the company that you've built up, and they're going to be just as incredible as you, if not better at certain areas, you can't get triggered with how great they are. The whole thing backfires. You can't be triggered in any kind of way. Even if one of them looks like a supermodel, and the other one sings like Celine, and the other one's got legs of steel, and the other one's got a super ninja skills, and the other one can write like a poet, and the other one can, you can't, there can't be any kind of competition with the people that are your allies in business when they're on your team.

And I think for the majority, when I have this conversation with people, they get it, as long as it's their team. When we try to open up that team to be like, "What about your peers in the same industry?" And that's like, "Wait a minute. I have to extend it there." But this person is this, and this person is this, and this person is this. What I have found is if we can be "for me, for you, for us" in our organizations, for "me, for you, for us" in our business with our company, and "for me, for you, for us" in our industry, something crazy starts to happen.

So, when I look at what put Alpha Fem on this, on the stand, like, what really took Alpha Fem from being a good company making one or two million dollars a year to making one or two or three million dollars a month. What, what made the difference between those things? Was "for me, for you, for us" meaning Alpha Fem, and "for me, for you, for us" meaning the coaching industry, and "for me, for you, for us" meaning women of the world. Those different levels of actual leadership are what changed the brand's power.

Who's on your team? How far does your team go? Are you able to give people respect because they're on your team? They're in the same industry as you? Or are you in mad competition with the people in your industry, undercutting people and saying things because it makes you feel better, but really, there's no respect and there's no "for me, for you, for us"? And so, in leadership, it's like, how far, far does your leadership go? How far does the ripple go? And this will be a test. It'll start with self-leadership, and then your family and friends, your company, your industry, eventually maybe your gender, your nationality, the world. It'll grow. So, wherever you find yourself on this, this is where your team is. How you get to commun, to connect with your team.

So, one of the big important pieces of this program is communication. And communication is an imperfect thing because we're human, and it's human communication, and humans are imperfect. So, I'm going to teach you something in this program, and we're going to deepen this in a business setting. Some of you have heard this before in Fem Fatal, but you heard it in a relationship, like, love relationship setting. So, I'm going to teach you this conversation. And the thing about this communication and why it's so important is that it's got multiple layers to it, pun intended. There are multiple layers to this conversation because it's not just about what you say, it's about who you are when you say it. It's not about the fact that the communication has multiple steps. It's about the fact that if you're capable of doing the step in the communication correctly, it's because you've gotten to a point emotionally where you're ready to have the conversation.

So, what I love about what I'm going to teach you today is that the communication itself will show you whether or not you're ready to talk. The communication itself will show you if you're still in your trigger. The communication itself will show you, like, "I can't say that part," or "I can't do that part." It'll show you you're not ready yet to talk about it. For me, I honestly believe I could win a Nobel Peace Prize for this communication method. I cannot tell you the conversations that people have shared with me that this has changed. This has, this has been better. Like, divorces that were going terribly that this did better than any mediation session anybody had ever done. Business deals that were about to go in the toilet that turned around because of this. Court cases. Even simple things like getting a refund at a at a hotel, or or an upgrade at a hotel, or restaurants, or money. There is not one topic. Relationships, business, everything. It's touched everything. And the reason it works is not just because of the communication. So, I'm going to break it down for you. But the goal here is that you understand it's not just what you say, it's who you are when you say it. So, you could do this and say it perfectly, but not mean it, and it would all not work. So, the goal is the energetics as well as the communication.

So, this is called an Alpha Communication. A-L-P-H-A. Alpha Communication. And it's an acronym. And so, the first A is acknowledge the good. That's what A stands for. Acknowledge the good. The L stands for long-term vision. So, A, acknowledge the good. L, long-term vision. P is the problem. So, A, acknowledge the good. L, long-term vision. P, the problem. H is happiness for you and me. So, A, acknowledge the good. L, long-term vision. P, the problem. H, happiness for you and for me. And the last one is A again. Ask for what you want. Ask for what you want. So, A, acknowledge the good. L, long-term vision. P, the problem. H, happiness for me, for you, for us. And the last one, A, ask for what you want.

Now, although it's spelled this way, the way I suggest running yourself through the communication is backwards. So, here's how it starts. You're going to contemplate this communication before you have it. It's not just going to fly out of your mouth. You are going to have to sit with yourself before you ever have an Alpha Communication with someone. This is a practice that you do because only if you can effectively lead yourself through every piece of it are you ready to actually have it.

So, the first point, you've got to prep. So, the first part of it is, you've got to ask for what you want. Why is this so important? Because most people go into a communication about how they're dissatisfied, and they don't even know what they want. Have you had a partner look at you straight in the face and say, "I don't know what you want from me," and you've literally been fighting with them for 20 minutes? You're like, "How can you not know? I've been giving you crap for 20 minutes." And they're like, "Yes, I'm aware of that. I just don't know what the point is. What, what do you want me to do?" "Well, I don't know. You should figure it out." Doesn't work. What do you want?

And this is going to stop you from communicating a lot of times because you're going to realize that you don't know, or that the only reason you want to communicate is for the other person to feel bad, for the other person to feel guilty, for the other person to stress or worry that they're about to lose you somehow, for the other person to fix it when you don't even know what would fix it for you. You don't know what you want. You just want to tell them you want to be seen in your anger. It just wants you to understand how mad I am. This means there's still processing to do. So, if you can't figure out what the goal is for the communication, you can't have it. And if you can't imagine yourself telling the person what you want, for example, "So, what I'm asking is for you to feel really guilty." Can't imagine telling the person. This is the objective for the communication. Not ready for the communication yet.

Ideally, you would want something like, "What I'm asking is for space." "What I'm asking is for a divorce." "What I'm asking is for us to go see a counselor." "What I'm asking is for you to sign this verbal warning." "What I'm asking is for your commitment that this is not going to happen again." "What I'm asking is for you to come up with a different plan of action of how things can be done differently." "What I'm asking is for more time together." "What I'm asking for is more passionate time together." "What I'm asking for is more intentional time where we're not distracted and we're not doing other things at the same time. You and me time." "What I'm asking for is, you've got to figure out what you want."

And the, the big kicker with this, which is the toughest thing, is if they gave it to you, you would have to then be complete. This is another thing we're not so good at. So, say, "All I want is for us to spend more time together." And that's okay. "Perfect. How about tomorrow?" And you're like, "No, never mind. If I had to ask you, I don't want it anymore." "No, I'm busy tomorrow." Forever. "What I want is for you to take responsibility for your actions." "You're absolutely right. I take full responsibility." "No, I don't. I, I don't accept. It's not good enough. I don't want that. That's not it." You've got to figure out what it is because once you tell them what, what you want, then if they accept, that's got to be it. And so, if you can tell that you actually want to be mad a while longer, be mad a while longer before you have the communication. Does this make sense?

Okay. So, the next piece of the puzzle, after you ask for what you want, you've got to contemplate happiness for both of you. Now, a lot of times, you'll get halted here. You'll be like, "Oh, I know what I want, Melanie. I know exactly what I want. I've known what I wanted for 20 freaking years. This is not hard for me." Okay, perfect. So, now you want mutual happiness. "Oh, I don't know about that. But I want me to be happy, right?" You need to think. So, mutual happiness for me, for you, for us, means that I don't just want me to be happy. I actually care that you feel good as well. And when you say that, if they don't feel that you mean that, your asking for what you want won't land.

So, when you say to your employee, "I want you to love your job, and I want to love having you as an employee." You've got to mean that. If what you really mean is, "I don't care whether you love your job or not. If you're not happy, go work somewhere else." Then you're not ready for an Alpha Communication. If you can't get to the place where you genuinely see the human in front of you and you say, "This person deserves to be respected at work. This person deserves to enjoy coming to work, and I deserve to love having this employee that I pay every month and feeling like I'm getting supported. Like, we both deserve this." If you cannot get to that place, you're not ready for the Alpha Communication.

When you speak to your friend and you say, "I want you to feel so good coming to me with all the things you want to talk to me about, and I want to feel so good coming to you with all the things that I want to talk about." In the back of your head, you're like, "No, I probably never go to her with anything I'm talking about." That's not true. Don't say that. You don't say it just because it sounds good. You've got to really contemplate, "I want us to both be happy." Even when you're firing someone, "I really believe you deserve to work at a place that you absolutely love, and I really want every employee that works for me to feel right for me, and I don't feel that we have that." So, what I'm asking is for you to complete a two-week notice and complete your time working for me. You can do a joint happiness thing in a breakup. You can do a joint happiness thing when you're firing somebody because the fact is, if you don't mean it that you care about the mutual joy, you're probably wanting something for an unaligned way. If I don't genuinely want us both to be happy by the time I tell you what I'm asking for, it's probably very heavily weighing on, "This is better for me than it is for you."

And it is possible that people won't feel the same way as you. They might be like, "Well, I'm happy at this job. I love this job." But the thing is, people also say all kinds of things to keep a job. If your employees never think of anything new to bring to the table, they're not creative in their mind, and you know these are typically creative people. If they're not in love with the clients, if they're not really messaging you to say they love their job the way they used to, if they're not, and you can feel they don't really love their job anymore, but they're afraid to lose their job, and now they're like, "No, no, no, I love it. I love it." This is going to be hard. If they do, you can say things like, "My hope for you then is that in the next job, you don't lose sight of how much you love the job, so it doesn't get to where we are here today." But the idea is that by the time you're communicating with these people, you are so clear you want them to feel good, and you want to feel good. And this is what this is based in. Alpha Communication is for me, for you, for us. For me, for you, for us. We do not communicate things until we're ready to make them for me, for you, for us. Even if you have to say, "I..."

And this is the next part of it. The problem. So, the problem is usually very easy in communication. People are awesome with that. "The problem is you suck at your job." "The problem is we have no intimacy." "The problem is I don't enjoy your presence in my life anymore." Whatever it is that the problem is, you're going to find the problem is very simple, very easy for you to want to say.

But if you said to an employee that works for you, "The problem is that I'm not enjoying having you as an employee anymore, and I think you deserve to work for someone that appreciates you working for them. You're a great person, and I think that you deserve going into work every day and being a part of someone's company that genuinely appreciates working with you in the dynamics work. And I really believe I deserve to have an employee that comes in every day and makes me feel good about the job, the position, my business, and I don't think we we're doing that for each other right now." So, what I'm asking is that by the end of today, you pack up your things. You're going to get a month paid leave, but you're, you're complete for now. I, I don't even need you to finish up your two weeks. We're going to call it a day." But there's still respect. They still deserve to work for somebody who respects them.

Even if you say, "The problem is we are unable to communicate. We're, the way we speak to each other does not land. No matter how, how much I desire to have a good communication with you, no matter how I put it, I can't. We don't nail it when we talk to each other. And you deserve to work for someone who can effectively communicate with you in a way that feels good for you, and I deserve to have an employee I can speak to and what I say lands, and we do not have that right now." So, what I'm asking is that this be your last working day. I'll give you two weeks paid, paid notice, and that that completes our work together.

If you can't make it to the part where you genuinely care about their happiness, if your ability to communicate ends at the problem, go have a nap. Go have a sleep, a poop. Your nervous system's all over the place because fundamentally, you are capable of caring about people, even people that bug you, when you're a leader. Because you understand how important it is. It's important for you, for all your other employees, to see how you fire people. Please bear that in mind. You fire a person in a really tragic way, everyone else is not feeling comfortable anymore. The way you hire people, the way you fire people, the way you handle communication with people, it affects everybody on your team. So, you keeping it together is a "for me, for you, for us" thing. Because you don't know how close your employees are together. It could so easily be that this person, first thing they do, is talk to their best friend and how they got fired. And their best friend was someone you loved on the team. But then they find out how you did it, and they're like, "What? I don't think I can over this company anymore."

There's a huge impact. Your, your company is a family. It's a team. People love each other. They spend most of their life talking to each other. You have no idea as the bonds that are created there. It's so important that you remember there's, it's weaved. Everyone is weaved within each other. You don't just have individual people walking and doing a job. You have a collective. You hurt one, you hurt them all. It matters. It so matters.

Then there's your industry. Because guess what? That person will probably end up working for someone in your industry. And they'll say, "Last job I worked at, the boss was nuts. The way she fired me was disgusting. Never work for that company." And this happens. And a lot of times, industries have the same sex, nationality as you are in there. And people start talking about how you mistreated women, and how you mistreated, and it gets, and it's like, "This is not, you don't have responsibility." You hurt your "for me, for you, for us" on every scale. And this is how a lot of people limit their, their growth is that they've burned bridges that are bigger than they realize. They burned bridges before they even got close to them. You burned an entire industry before you ever started. There are people who've said things about Alpha Fem. I thought, "What a shame. We've never worked together." You don't even know me. You've never even talked to me. But you've said things that are so bad, and I know your skill set, and I was recommended to hire you for different reasons, but I've heard things you've said about my brand that, ever talking to me, and I will never hire you. But through the industry, through talking about feminine energetics, through talking about all kinds of other things, she loses a contract that could have given her, who, who knows what. You never know when you're judging, when you're losing it, when you fire, when you fire people a certain way, when you talk to people a certain way, it gets around. And the goal is not to pretend you're something else to avoid that repercussion. The goal is to understand the impact of your power when you have it.

The crazy thing about leadership is who you're being right now. And if you could just like, really listen to this, this, this is so important. What I'm going to tell you: who you're being right now is who you become. Like, you're looking at this version of Melanie right now, and you're listening to this version of Melanie right now. But the woman that changed my life is not me. I'm the one that gets to live the benefits. The woman who changed my life is the girl that was sleeping in the car that decided to do the personal development work. The woman who decided to start Alpha Fem when she didn't know what the heck she was doing. The woman who decided to lead entrepreneurs through a global pandemic because she believed somewhere, somehow, it was her role to do it. That girl, the chicken nugget girl with a gap between her teeth, that was really excited and spoke way too close to the camera. That girl.

So, wherever you are on your journey right now, you might not think it's impacting who you become, but this is, this is the you that makes it. You are the one that makes what's coming. You're either burning bridges or building bridges right now. You're either projecting an ex, an energy that's building a golden thread that's already manifesting people, opportunity, places your way. You're not even realizing it. People are feeling about you in this program, in the Alpha Fem experience, in AF Next. They're noticing you. They're saying, "I think I might want to hire that person." Or, "I really love that person. I'd love to invite them on my podcast." Or, "I love that person. I love what they stand for. I'd love to be friends with this person." I love you. You've got people putting feelers all over the place. You don't know yet what you've started building.

It's important that you lead now as though you had everything you've ever wanted. Because when you have everything you've ever wanted, it'll be the woman that you are now that built it. Even when you have it, it won't be the person who has it that built it. So, how soon is soon enough to start acting like you own the world? It's like, now. You own the world. Now you build owning the world. Now you own your company. Now you build owning your company. Now you wait until you feel like this to start to act as if you matter enough to have a well. Then it's going to start a lot later. But if you take ownership now, and you take leadership now, and you start acting now like you have a global brand that touches people from all over the world, and it matters, and people talk because it matters, and people know you, and they expect a lot from you because you're a leader. If you start acting like that now, you've already started moving things at warp speed beyond what you could possibly imagine. Because intention and manifestation go hand in hand. If you've ever manifested anything with any kind of spiritual teacher, they, they'll tell you to set your intentions. But the thing is, intention is intertwined in everything you do. When you speak, you say things, but what was your intention behind what you said? That's what you'll manifest. Leadership is about making squeaky clean intentions to generate squeaky clean results so that you can create squeaky clean projects, companies, movements, families, friendships, relationships.

So, if you somehow kind of bypass the first two, if you're like, "I know what I want. Of course, I want us to be happy." But here's a problem. If you make it that far, you're going to get stopped again because long-term vision is going to put you back in check again. Long-term vision means, what do you see for you and for them in the future? If you are still mad and all you want is for them to rot, you are going to have a very hard time with this part. You're going to have a super hard time with this part. So, you've got to be able to have some sort of long-term vision. And it doesn't even mean that you need to have a relationship long-term. You could actually say something like, "What I want is that in 10 years from now, when we look back at today in the conversation we're having, that we're glad we had it." "What I want is that in, in, in the future, when we look back at this time, we're proud of the way we handled it." You could also say, "What matters to me is that even though there are things I want to change in the way our relationship is, that we always remember each other fondly. That matters to me a lot." Or you might say, "My intention is that our work together continues for a long time. I want to be able to work with you for a long time. I want to be able to refer people to you for a long time." What do you want? What's the long-term vision? Even, "I want us both to feel proud of how we handled build this." That would be a game-changer to have as a context early on in a conversation.

And the most important one is, you've got to acknowledge the good in the person you're speaking to. If you cannot acknowledge the good in the person you're speaking to, most of everything else you're saying isn't really true. Everyone has something beautiful about them. If you cannot acknowledge anything good about the person, take more time. Even if the thing that's good about them was in the past, like, "I first want to tell you, I really love the first three months of you working here. I loved them. I'm so grateful for the work we did together." Then, "I first want to tell you, I am so grateful for the children that we have, the beautiful children that we created together. I'll never be able to thank you enough for those kids." "I first want to thank you. I want to acknowledge you for whatever it is." This will change your energy when you start doing the Alpha Communication. When it comes out of your mouth, and that's the first thing that you say, the rest feels different.

So, the reason I have you do it backwards is because if you are flaming mad, and you start by trying to acknowledge the good, you're, you're going to quit before you've even started. When it's everything's going wrong, and things are not working, and it's like, "Melanie wants me to say something good." Like, "You're real nice and stuff, but here's the problem." You're going to have a really hard time fishing for something good. And we don't want it to feel like you've been fishing. But if you went backwards, you know what you want. You genuinely care that you are both happy at the end of all this. You know what the problem is. You understand that there's a long-term vision for both of you. And you acknowledge the good in the person. You will speak to this person in a different way than they've ever been spoken to before, and it will change the dynamic of your communication.

You cannot ensure the person that you're speaking to is going to react properly in the moment. You can't ensure that because people haven't taken "She Who Leads Herself." They haven't taken this program, and they react instead of respond. So, they might still be like, "You say you want me to be happy, but you're breaking off of me. You say you want me, you're firing me. You say you want us to have a good relationship, and then you're doing this." They might do that. But the one thing is that when the emotion drops, and they remember how you spoke to them in a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or a few years from now, all that will be left was the absolute power and majesty of that communication. And they will realize they misbehaved, or they did not respond in a way that that was equal to the intentionality that you put in your communication. And they will apologize. It is striking how many apologies I have received in my life, days, weeks, days, months, years sometimes after these Alpha Communications have come.

But this is one of the mantras in my life that I took on very early. And I believe this in life, and I believe this in business, and I believe this in relationships. I am the one, or the one who got away. I will not be the one you have to run away from. I will not be the one that mistreated you and made you feel like garbage and screamed at you and made you feel like, "Thank God I left there." I won't be that person ever. There's no way. I care about you. I care about us. If there's a misunderstanding somewhere, it will never been.

For my intention, I'll speak to you from the bottom of my heart. And if I can't do anything about it now, at least I'll speak to you in a way where, when the energy drops in hindsight, when you remember, you'll remember respect from me. I will not lose it. I will, I will find a way. And more, even more important, with strangers, because when there's love in the room, love speaks louder than any other thing. Eventually, even if you've said the worst things in the world to a person you love, if you come back and you say, "I love you, and I'm a jerk, and I can't believe I said those things," sometimes you can circle back.

But with people where there's, it's not like that, it's a friendship, or it's a work relationship, or it's a business connection, your, your communication is everything. Your communication is the only bridge that they can figure between the inner and the outer world. It's the only way they are in relationship with you is in your communication, verbal and non-verbal communication. So I want you to practice an alpha communication before our next module, if you can. I want you to write one out and imagine. And this could be, you could take a story that's happened before and be like, "What would have happened if I would have alpha communicated this?" Or you can imagine something that's happening right now in your life that you might want to do an alpha communication for. Tomorrow, we're going to go deeper into it. I'm going to, I'm going to give you examples of it, and there's a few things I want to tidy up about it so that you can practice it over the weekend. And then we're going to have our first Q&A of the program on Monday with me, because we have Q&As on here with me. So you have asked Jack, but you also have Q&As with me based on the, the stuff I'm teaching you in the program.

So what I would love for you to do before tomorrow's session, that's going to be at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time, so you have almost like 22 hours to do this, just imagine a communication and try to do it. I first want to tell you, I want to acknowledge this, and my long-term vision for us is this, and the problem I have is this, and I want you to be happy, and I want to be happy, and what I'm asking for is this. And if you don't have a problem, you could do this with a really simple thing. You could do it with something very light-hearted. You could just play around with it, just to see if you understand the energetics of it. If you notice at some point that it would be disingenuous for you to continue writing it, you realize there is no long-term vision, you realize the thing you said of acknowledging them was like, "Well, I love your hair," um, "and I really hope that you don't get some sort of contagious itchy disease during the weekend." And the problem is, you know, like if you, if you're superficial or you can't find something good, you'll know, "I've got healing to do around this. If I were to actually genuinely have a conversation with the person, it wouldn't go well because my energy around it is not correct."

What's beautiful with an alpha communication is if your energy is correct when you're doing it, even if you end up having to go off the alpha communication, if someone cuts you off, and you don't get to finish everything you want it to say, or if they've got questions, or if they interject with something, the frequency that you're in is entirely clean, and you're going to be able to hold yourself, leading yourself, even in the responses. So you could say something like, "I, this is what I appreciate in you. This is long-term vision. Here's the problem." And the person could cut you off right away and say, "That's not what happened. This is what happened. This is what happened. This would happen." And you would be like, "I know what's coming next for me anyway. I'm going to tell them that I care about my happiness and their happiness, and I'm going to ask them for what I want. Let them talk. Let them talk. You don't need to break your frequency. You've already done all the work. You can, you can accept that they have a moment in there. It's not going to move your leadership. You're clear on the entire sequence. If they bring you out, you can go back in. You've always, you've already got a plug to go back. You just go right back into the communication frame, and then your only job is to manage your feelings around the communication."

If you can communicate with your team this way, you will change your business. If you can address conflicts like this in your life, you will change your life. And the thing is, this works with everything. Like, I, I remember one of the first times I ever tried this in a business setting. I had, this was early on in my journey. I didn't have tons of money, but I was really excited because I was going to do my program from a hotel in Toronto. And I had found this hotel, and I loved it, and I was so excited. And we booked it. And when we checked in, I told the guy in the front, "I'm leading a really important program." You know, when you're starting your business and you're just so excited, I was like, "I am leading a program. This is so important. Do not disturb. No phone calls. All the things." And he was like, "Yeah, no problem." And I checked in and all the things. And while I'm leading my call, this thing goes off: "Hello, guests of the blah blah blah hotel. We are going to do a temporary fire drill. This is just a drill. Um, there is no fire. Just, you know, just sound like this for like 20 minutes." So I had to end my call, and I was livid. Like, my level of anger was 165 out of three. Like, I was so mad. I thought I was going to just go down there and start crying. I was embarrassed. I was mad. My clients. I had told them. The front desk guy. This cost so much money. I cannot believe it. Everything's ruined. Like freaking out. And I was like, "I wonder if I could do an alpha communication for this." I'm like, "But I don't care about these people. These people suck." And I'm like, "Hang on. Why did I choose this hotel? Why did I want to be here? There's a reason I chose this. I had a vision. There's something I wanted." Go back to the vision. I coached myself into the steps. What do I want? I do not want to pay for this day. Like, they've wrecked it for me. I don't want to pay for this day. Okay. How is this a win-win? Well, if they don't do that, I'll never come back. It's not, is that really a win-win? No, that's a, you almost don't lose, and I win. Okay. So what do I want? I want to be, I want them to not have lost a guest. I want them to make, I want them to feel good about me, me being their guest. Oh, that sucks. Now I've got to change my attitude. I want them to feel good about me being a guest here. I've got to change my attitude. It immediately changed the energy I was in for the communication. Can you see how that would, if what I really want is for them to enjoy me as as a client, then I've got to change my attitude. And what do I want? I want to love being a guest at this hotel. Now all of a sudden, I'm emotional instead of angry. Okay, my emotions have changed. So what's the problem? The problem is I just wish they would have told me the drill was going to happen. I had told the front desk guy how important this was to me. If he would have told me that was happening, I would have made other arrangements. Like, this disrupted my business call because of this. The problem is I shared with them how important the privacy was, and they did not tell me there was going to be a fire drill, and they most probably knew what it was, that there was going to be one. Okay. So what's my long-term vision? I want to be able to come back here. I want to be, I want to redo. I want to be able to experience this the way I wanted to. Okay. I want to be able to come here more. I want to, I want to have a good relationship with this hotel. I do want that. Okay. So acknowledge the good. I love this hotel. Well, that's different than how I felt before I took myself through this process.

So I went downstairs, I looked at the guy, that was the guy who checked me in, and I said, "I need to speak with you." And he said, "Okay." And I said, "I first want to tell you that I absolutely love this hotel. It's as beautiful and real as I thought it would be in the pictures, and I want to be able to come here for a very long time. But when I told you when I checked in that I had a business meeting, and I told you to not do not disturb, and this and this and this and this, you never told me there was going to be a fire alarm, and you just drilled right into my most important call with all of my clients on it." And his face was just like, and I said, "I want you guys to love me as a client. I want you to be happy when I check in here, and I want to love being a client of yours. But I do not feel happy paying for the stay after what happened." And he said, "I am refunding your entire stay and I'm offering you a full other stay of the same amount of length for you to come back whenever you can. We're going to make this right for you." Like, there was no, "We're so sorry." It's because there was nothing. It was an immediate response, an immediate apology, exactly what I wanted and more. And I was just like, "Oh my gosh, thank you, thank you." And he said, "And you know what? Dinner's on me. Dinner is on me, uh, for tonight. You and your partner go and have dinner at our restaurant, and that's on me." He did not consult. This is true. Did not consult the boss. Did not do right away. Made it right. You're going to be shocked what is possible for you when you communicate this way. Because a lot of the times, people get so angry at people that all they care about is the person feeling bad, and that is the least productive thing you could want. What do you really want? What do you really, really, really want? Because that's probably easier to get than the cheap, "I want them to realize they made a mistake." People aren't dumb. They know when they made a mistake. But if they feel like you want them to feel guilty about their mistake, they'll give you that, and that's all you'll get. If they feel like you just want something to be made right, and you respect them, they will want to make it right with you. So sometimes we cut off our nose despite our face. You just want to feel seen in your anger. You just want to be right that it was wrong. And in getting that, that's all you get. Leadership is where you get even more than what you bargain for. It's where you give people the compassion that you pray for. It's where you're able to see the humanity in other people and stand shoulder-to-shoulder, even with a person who's made a mistake. And it is extraordinary what happens.

You will not be perfect. You will mess up alpha communications. You will forget alpha communications. You'll be halfway through the problem and you'll go, "Oops, forgot. Ow, I'm right in. I forgot the two first ones. Can I rewind? I don't think it's gonna work if I rewind. Oops, I messed this one up." But if the majority of your life and your communications are structured in a way to make this work, you, you're going to change your life. Everything about it. So enjoy, enjoy crafting these communications, whether they're business, whether they're with your parents, whether they're with somebody from the past you'll never even get to talk to. It doesn't matter. Just see what, how different it would have turned out. You would have written it like this. There will be time to practice. There will be time for Q&A. So don't get in your head about doing it wrong. Just see what comes up. Enjoy. You're a badass. You got this. Go make it happen. And I shall see you tomorrow.